


Denouement

by Tavina



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Cedric Diggory Dies, F/M, Former Cho Chang/Cedric Diggory, Growth and Change in a Post War World, Is it really canonical if it's a super rarepair, Post-Battle of Hogwarts, Post-Canon, Post-Hogwarts, Technically Canonical
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:40:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27760063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tavina/pseuds/Tavina
Summary: (n.) the final part of a play, movie, or narrative in which the strands of the plot are drawn together and matters are explained or resolved.
Relationships: Cho Chang & Ginny Weasley, Cho Chang & Marietta Edgecombe, Cho Chang/Blaise Zabini, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 37
Collections: Heart Attack Exchange 2020





	Denouement

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CypressSunn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CypressSunn/gifts).



“And meanwhile everything is so small.

Compared to my heart’s desire, the sea is a drop.”

— Adelia Prado, “Denouement”

* * *

They meet again after the war, on a warm spring afternoon in the Alley. Both, with other people of course.

There was a girl on his arm, someone who hadn’t been a school mate of theirs that she doesn’t recognize. And here she is with her current boyfriend, Andy — a new arrival from China, doctorate of Ancient Runes, someone her parents approved of and soon to be ex if he keeps talking of marriage and “settling down” — Cho Chang has never “settled down” and, she suspects, never will.

Ten years ago, she’d dated a golden boy who died for a year and a half, and somehow, no one else who’d followed had ever been able to fill his shoes, not even the Boy-Who-Lived now splattered on the pages of the Daily Prophet for more mundane achievements than vanquishing Dark Lords.

They pass on the street.

“Hey, Chang.”

“Same to you, Zabini.”

And continue onwards.

Blaise Zabini hadn’t been on her radar before this for a long time, given that he’d laid low after the war despite not really participating in it. They’d said he had Death Eater sympathies, and lambasted him for it properly.

Maybe that was why he had tried to stay away from commenting. Neither side particularly cared for him. The losing side had only seen the back of him, and it hadn’t been a very helpful back, so no wonder his old housemates didn’t have much to say about him.

Even so, with every new boyfriend, her parents had hoped this would be the one. She is her parent’s only child, the only lens through which they understood the new country they put down roots in.

They’re just trying to understand how she’d become so different, why she does not want what they want for her.

_Qiu’er, you’re not getting any younger, maybe it’s time to think about—_

But then, she’s already twenty-five, about to turn twenty-six this coming winter. Her ways are set.

“Imagine being interested in racing brooms,” Andy says, casting a glance at the front window of Quality Quidditch supplies. “I can’t imagine.”

In her mother’s generation, she’d be a leftover woman, no hope of a good husband and the chance to be a homemaker. But she is not her mother’s generation.

“I can,” she says, and decides then and there that despite his qualifications and intelligence, she’d be settling if she settled down with him. Another man on his way out of her life then. “I used to play Quidditch.”

Her mother had been educated in the famous magical academy in Shanghai, where she’d met her eventual husband, had been the top of her class and a brilliant witch.

But that was in the old world, before the revolution and the chaos, before the down to the countryside movement and the loss of so many years for educated people.

“Quidditch?”

“British sporting event,” she says, feeling flippant as they continue down the street. “Uses racing brooms. I used to own one.” Quidditch is not _strictly_ British, but it certainly didn’t have the popularity as it did here in the Old Country, so to her, Quidditch is a sign of her own British tendencies.

Her parents had left then, because they could, with enough money and education and the chance to leave. And since leaving they’d never been able to return.

They’d been educated in Western Magical Forms, both of them, so the transition hadn’t been as hard as it could’ve been, but her life here is built on their sacrifices, and try as she might, she’d never been able to forget it.

Andy lapses into a silence, thinking things over. “You know,” he says, after another minute. “You and I really aren’t the same speed, Xiao Chang.”

“That’s fine by me.” What a relief now that he’s realized. “We can part ways amicably then.”

He looks like he wants to say something more, but she flashes him a smile. Since she’s made it no big deal to her, he can’t make it seem like a big deal to him.

And it’s unfortunate, because there’s not too much wrong with him.

But she’s not his ideal woman, and he’s not Cedric, so the point is moot.

* * *

On Monday morning, she floos to her office in the Alley from her flat, and sets about getting her desk in order before her first client meeting.

Over the years since the war, she built her business from the ground up, combining charms, runes, and her own outside perspective to provide some of the best protection there was on this side of the world.

If she’d been this prodigious during the war, maybe more people would’ve lived or at least been less injured.

If she’d been born ten years earlier maybe—

But it doesn’t matter. She’d been born when she was born, she has what she has now.

Without the experiences of the war, she might never have even started making and selling protection charms. Without the war, maybe she would’ve gone on to play professional quidditch, even though she lacked the spark that made seekers brilliant.

Instead, during her years as Ravenclaw seeker, she’d substituted her grit and sweat instead. Hard work didn’t always pay off against natural brilliance, but it sure as hell beat sitting around doing nothing about it.

She has a workshop in her flat to crash test everything she makes before taking it out to the field behind her parent’s house to test it again.

Ginny Potter-Weasley is coming by today, to pick up the newest anti-crashing charms for the Holyhead Harpies.

“Hey Cho, it’s so good to see you!” And there Ginny is, stepping out of the Floo, hair pulled back smartly, a knitted woolen beanie attop her head. “It feels like it’s been forever!”

The last time they’d really sat down to talk had been at the bachelorette party right before Ginny and Harry got married way back in the winter ‘99.

It’s been nearly five years now.

But over the years Ginny has always flown by, saying hi, keeping her updated, light small talk about the weather and weddings and new members of the Weasley clan.

“You’ve been traveling,” she counters lightly with a smile. “Professional quidditch takes you all over Europe, so it’s not like it’s ever really been in our schedules to meet up properly.”

Some, she’s sure, would find it odd that Harry Potter’s first girlfriend and his wife would be on good terms with each other — Rita Skeeter had had a field day with the headlines of that Prophet article when she found out that Cho was invited to the wedding, just waiting for her to put in her objection during the vows — but the War had bound them all together pretty tightly.

Despite Marietta, but then that was more beef with Hermione than Ginny.

Adults don’t drag friends for the fuck ups of friends of friends.

“Anyhow,” she turns to the safe which she unlocks wandlessly, clicking through the puzzle combination, almost absentmindedly. “I appreciate you talking to the manager of the Harpies about my work and getting them interested in what I could offer.”

“I never get over you doing that.” Ginny shakes her head, chuckling all the while. “Your work is always beautiful, but your aptitude for wandless locking is like nothing else.”

It’d been a simple kongming lock, mostly determined by pushes and pulls.

“You’re flattering me. It’s simple really.”

“Simple? Flattery? Oh Merlin’s balls, Cho, let me say something nice about you for once.”

She and Ginny share a laugh. After all these years, it’s still amusing enough that she can’t take a proper compliment.

There’s not much small talk after that, she and Ginny get to work talking about the specifications of the charm, what would activate the protection, failsafes worked in, the proper way to check check that the charms were still in place and in working order that is _not_ ‘dive from high altitude with someone attached to the broom,’ look through the contract together, and by the end of the two hour session, the contract is signed and sealed, galleons exchanging hands.

“Safe travels,” she passes Ginny her hat.

A flash of green and “Number 8 Godric’s Hollow” later, Ginny’s off.

* * *

Mid afternoon, there’s an owl tapping at her window. Unexpected, but she lets it in anyway.

It comes from a man named Mister Randolph Spudmore, who she recognizes as the son of Able Spudmore of Ellerby and Spudmore, the historic broom inventors, and as the inventor of the Firebolt.

It says:

_Dear Miss Chang,_

_It has come to my attention that you have been registering and providing protection charms for various international quidditch teams, most notably, the Holyhead Harpies. I have heard wonderful things about your charm and runework combinations, and would love the chance to talk over a business proposal with you in more detail._

There’s some more of the letter, discussions of his qualifications — the Firebolt of course, it’s been nearly nine years since the broom came out and it’s _still_ top of the line and supremely well made. Few people have ever been able to procure one with how limited the supply is.

She’d only ever seen one in passing, at world cup games and on the pitch in Harry’s hands. Rare as it is, she can say she’s played quidditch against someone on a Firebolt.

She applauds Mister Spudmore for his business acumen and his inventive qualities, but since they have never met, she can say much less about his personality and whether or not she would like to work with him.

_You can reach me by owl post, or through the Floo Call Network, between the business hours of eight am and five pm._

_Signed,_

_Randolph Spudmore_

_Racing Brooms Inc._

Carefully, she sets the letter aside, thinking about it.

On one hand, there is a reason she registered every invention she’d created for patent with the appropriate Ministry Bureau. She’d been the sole creator, had often tested her own creations herself, had put in countless hours of work, of blood, sweat and tears into everything she made, so she could vouch for quality.

And she is loathed to part with control of any part of that process. She called all the shots in her own research and work. She talked to clients and saw to the work.

On the other…

She could reach so many people with this new partnership.

But only if it could get off the ground.

And for that, she would have to ascertain Mister Spudmore’s character herself.

How she will be able to do that though, likely depended on going out to another important social gathering, that she gets invited to, but rarely thinks of going to.

For a brief moment, she regrets breaking things off with Andy.

He looked pretty enough, and she could’ve always turned up to hang off his arm, bat her eyelashes and form her own opinions.

But she _has_ broken things off with Andy, sure that he’s interested in a wife and a homemaker, and she’s not really material for what he’s looking for, despite their shared interest in runes and arcane puzzles.

Even though he’d been on a good, stable career path and had seemed like a good cultural fit in other respects.

Even though he would’ve made her parents very happy.

She’s broken things off with him, so she’ll have to find herself a new set of dress robes and attend alone.

When she writes back to Mister Spudmore, it is demuring and self conscious, worded with hesitation and laced with a healthy dose of consideration.

If she’s covering all her bases, well, no one would blame her for it.

* * *

Evening finds her in a muggle pub in the wider city of London, made up and pretty, but with a smile like a shark to ward off the guys.

She’s not waiting for any sort of guy.

Marietta’s outline appears in the doorway, hunched over, her coat collar turned up, hair combed down over her face to hide the scarring.

She gets up to bring her friend over to the table, wandlessly and wordlessly, casting a slight concealment charm to reduce the oddness of Marietta’s scarring, and pulls out a chair. “How’ve you been?”

It’s been two weeks since they last met up, though Marietta looks worse this time than the last.

Her mother’s been ill for a long time, and they’d been living on fixed income for a while, with the state of Marietta’s job.

And Merlin knows that Marietta would never accept help. Not just because Cho’s successful now, in a way that Marietta, shelving old books in the antique bookshop in the Alley never could be, but because her friend has her pride, and she doesn’t want to step all over that.

Even if that could mean Marietta and her mother living more comfortably.

When Hermione had decided that anyone who backed out of Dumbledore’s army that year could wear their shame forever, she hadn’t — or at least, Cho hopes she hadn’t — thought of how the scars would follow whoever that was forever.

Even if they have a good reason.

Even if it’s just because they were sixteen years old, in the middle of a war with misinformation flying everywhere, and scared.

Marietta’s a bit better off these days than it was when they were still in school. Makeup can hide the scarring for a bit, but she’s sure that at night when the makeup’s off, there are still regrets in there, and hurt wrapped up in wounds that can’t quite heal.

She’d done it for her mum. Marietta, being so loyal to her family and friends, could not bear the weight of knowing that Umbridge would go after her mum.

She shouldn’t’ve made Marietta come with her, because she’d known that her best friend didn’t want to go, but she’d needed the support, and Marietta hadn’t failed to give it. Making Marietta come was on her.

Even so, Cho finds little forgiveness for her heart for Hermione Granger-Weasley these days, that particular point of contention a nonstarter between them.

But then, maybe that’s the rub, they’re too similar — all sharp edges and “hold my own close,” quick witted and sharp tongued — and yet they come from difference, so they can never quite see eye to eye.

Marietta throws back a shot of whiskey, takes a big breath, before turning to Cho. “They found out what Mum’s illness is.”

She reads the worry off of the fear on Marietta’s face. “No good?”

“Brain cancer.” Marietta sets her shot glass down, a flush on her cheeks. “Late stage.”

It hits like a punch to the gut.

She’d met Marietta on the Hogwarts Express, all those long years ago — good God, has it already been fourteen years — and they’d been sorted into Ravenclaw together all those years ago, her before Marietta, and Ms. Edgecomb had been a constant grace to both of her parents ever since.

They still spoke well of her even now, so many years later.

“I—” her throat closes on her before she can say ‘I’m so sorry, Marietta.’ These things and these words do not ever make it alright or truly offer her sympathy. Instead, she throws her arm over Marietta’s shoulders, pulling them together despite the space between their stools. “I believe in her. She’s strong.”

Strong for how long and how much they can afford to treat her for, less clear, but that bridge is a bridge to cross when they get to it.

She waves at the bartender for another round of drinks.

Marietta manages a watery smile, and they clink shot glasses together.

* * *

She gets made up to go to the Spring Ball hosted by the Ministry, because she’s heard from a reliable source — Ginny — that Mister Randolph Spudmore will be in attendance for at least part of the night and they’d invited her to do a presentation on her current research.

Everyone hungered for a little bit of safety these days, even with the war behind them.

Bold red lipstick, an updo complete with a hairstick dripping in jade flowers, a sheath dress, off shoulder bell sleeves, a lilac lace shawl, a pair of amethyst and silver earrings, and a pair of kitten heels.

No date, but such things are inevitable when she keeps dumping guys even when they’re not strictly objectionable.

She steps out of the Floo into the Ministry’s grand ballroom, not a hair out of place and turns heads, as she did ten years ago stepping into the Yule Ball on Cedric’s arm.

She’s a good looking woman, and she knows how to clean up well when she’s not out on the quidditch pitch or in her workshop.

Picking up a flute of champagne and making her way through the crowd, couples paired off and talking amongst themselves, is still natural, if a bit unpracticed in the recent years. Parties are no longer quite her speed, but she eases her way back into it.

On the other side of the ballroom, Blaise Zabini is in attendance. He’s standing with an older woman who could only be his mother, her hair streaked with silver, but elegant all the same. They shared the same high cheekbones and slanting eyes.

She’d heard that Célia Zabini was a famous beauty of her era, and had been a model on the continent sometime before her string of increasingly wealthy husbands and their suspicious deaths and the ever growing Zabini fortunes.

Which husband Blaise happened to be the son of is unclear.

But this doesn’t matter that much.

Somewhere in the crowd is Randolph Spudmore, the man she’s really here to size up.

“Fancy seeing you here, Chang.” Blaise’s low drawl is unmistakable.

“Fancy seeing _you_ ,” she responds, toying with the flute of champagne between her fingertips. “They invited me here to discuss the newest protective warding I did on their Nimbus 2500s for the Holyhead Harpies.”

“Oh, so you’re a keynote speaker.” He waves a houself over, selects his own cocktail of choice, and looks at her with avid interest. “To be sure, I had wondered what you’ve been doing these days.”

She ought to be looking for Spudmore, maybe talking to him outside of a business setting, but she _had_ been at least a little curious about Blaise ever since seeing him out and about in the Alley the other week,

“Oh you know, same old same old.” She’d painted her nails with a mauve, which went better with her earrings and shawl than it did with her lipstick, but she does not want to part with the red lip, so mismatched it will stay. “People have been wondering what _you’ve_ been up to, actually. You haven’t been out much in the last few years.”

_And as far as we’re all aware, you don’t talk to blood traitors and their ilk._

“I’ve been around,” he says, sipping fruit cocktail and attempting a smile that looks more like a smirk. “But not really around, you know?”

“Hiding out until the storm blows over?” Everyone knows that most of the Slytherin House, of which he had been a seventh year at the time, had cleared out of the Great Hall the moment the Dark Lord’s declaration had been issued.

She’d flown herself back on her Comet 260 when she’d gotten the news that a battle at Hogwarts Castle had been about to occur. Despite the wishes of her parents that she keep herself safe — including what happened to Cedric, _especially_ because of what happened to Cedric, _the nail that sticks up gets hammered down_ — she had gone anyway.

“Recalibrating my position,” he counters.

And indeed, it had been some recalibration indeed if in seven years he’d managed to claw himself back to being invited to Ministry balls after being persona non grata like so many of his housemates and peers.

Then again, the Malfoys are here too, after making plenty of donations to various charitable war causes, though everyone still gives the senior Malfoys a wide enough berth for it to be noticeable.

Not all things had returned to the status quo after the war.

“I’ll leave you to it,” she says, spying Hermione Granger-Weasley coming their way, and decides to extricate herself before she has to talk to the other woman.

Whatever she wants to say, it isn’t covered in the list of platitudes her mother left her, and it’ll ruin a good night so best leave that alone.

* * *

She gets up to do her presentation, still on the lookout for Randolph Spudmore, but doesn’t spot him in the crowd.

Afterwards, Ginny loops her arm through Cho’s and pulls her away to talk. “So, I talked to Luna about this already, but Harry and I are going to have a baby, and we were wondering if you and your plus one would like to come to the shower?”

“Congratulations!” She turns to Ginny, elation on her tongue, and then a beat later slightly in shock. “What about your contract with the Harpies?”

Ginny had signed another five year contract with the Holyhead Harpies about five months ago with the start of the new year, and she imagines that having a baby would put a crimp on that plan.

The Harpies might have something built in to take on maternity leave though, because on second thought that would only be logical.

“Oh, I’ve got that talked over already.” Ginny waves absently to someone in the crowd as they continue onwards. “A Christmas baby on the way, and the season will have wound down a lot by then. Besides, I’ve been thinking about what I want to do after I retire from playing professional quidditch. It’s not a job for a full time mum.”

“Your career’s just got started.” Ginny had only started playing quidditch professionally some years after the war, at age nineteen, and had signed a three year contract before the newest five year contract with the Harpies. She’s only twenty-three now, hardly past her prime chaser days and certainly didn’t _need_ to retire when she’s still at the top of her game. The Harpies have been playing remarkably well just this season past. “But you’re already thinking about retirement?”

Ginny looks at her, baffled for a moment, blinking. “You know, Cho, for all that you and Hermione don’t get along, that’s _exactly_ what she said to me too.”

Ah, there it is again, she and Hermione Granger-Weasley seeming similar.

She shrugs, half resigned to it. “I’m married to my career. I’m sure it’s obvious.”

There’s so much she doesn’t want to give up in life, which is why she’s not the settling sort and why she’d dropped Andy in the end.

After the war, everyone hungered for a little safety, and no one hungered more than the girl who watched the light go out of everyone’s eyes when they realized Cedric Diggory wasn’t coming home.

The first innocent casualty of this war.

Ginny had grown up near Cedric, she remembers, the Burrow close to where Amos and Anne’s house would be.

She has to remember to visit. They’re getting on in years, and without Cedric to bring cheer to their house…

Lonely.

Though she couldn’t really help with that.

“I’d say that about Hermione, too, but she picked Ron _and_ took the Ministry position so that’s a wash.” Ginny laughs, almost too bright, but with the vibrance of someone well content with her place in life.

“Speaking of career,” Cho says, and pulls two flutes of champagne off a nearby table for both of them, and they clink glasses. “Have you seen Mister Spudmore at all? I did want to meet him outside of a business setting to get a good idea of what I can expect from a partnership.”

Ginny thinks it over. “I saw him over by the statue of Ignotus Peverell. He’s not one for crowds, the poor man, suddenly came into fame, you know, with the Firebolt and all, so I don’t know if he’s still there, but you could check?”

“I’ll have to.” And if she can’t find him there, at least she knows he’s not someone who likes to grab the spotlight, though that doesn’t say a whole lot as to _why._ “Give my regards to Harry will you? I’m sure he must be over the moon.”

This prompts another laugh from Ginny. “Either way, remember to bring your plus one to introduce him to us, I know he’s floating around somewhere, but he and I and the rest of the gang have never quite kept in touch.”

“My plus one?” She didn’t come here on someone’s arm tonight.

“Oh, the guy Hermione said you were here with.” Ginny glances over her shoulder. “He’s coming this way.” A glance behind her reveals… “Blaise was it?” Ginny asks, the barest of smiles on her face.

“Blaise Zabini. I was in Harry’s year at Hogwarts and in House—”

“Slytherin, yes,” Ginny says sharply. “I remember you laughing about the Chamber of Secrets.”

A shadow crosses his face, though he brushes that away. “And for that I sincerely apologize.” He catches Cho by the waist, lightly as though they’re meant to be a set, and leans in to whisper in her ear. “Please play along.”

And she doesn’t know why, but the sincerity of his comment gives her just enough pause for them to have somehow drifted away from Ginny.

* * *

“So you didn’t come with the man I saw you out with a couple weeks ago?” he asks as they walk. “Granger seemed to think that we were together, and I doubt she’d assume that if you had a steady suitor.”

“Not that it’s really your business, but I dumped him.” _And I don’t have a steady suitor, not that that’s your business either._ Three flutes of champagne, and she’s _still_ no closer to finding Randolph Spudmore. This particular outing seems more and more like a wash.

“Why?” He seems genuinely curious about this, as they walk out past the main crowd, and towards the statue of Ignotus Peverell in the atrium.

Then again, that’s been the whole thing of his since she’s taken notice of him at this event. Genuine.

Didn’t really think she’d be attaching that word to a Zabini any time soon.

“We weren’t the same speed.” _We wanted different things._ “What about the girl you had on your arm the last time we met? Didn’t bring her here with you?”

He makes a face. “I brought her out because Mum thought it’d be nice, but we didn’t really see eye to eye.” He shrugs. “You know how the older generation is sometimes, they don’t change with the times. And some of us don’t change with the times either. It’s a shame, but it is what it is.”

“At any rate, you could’ve told Granger-Weasley that we weren’t together and saved yourself the fuss.” Past the statue of Ignotus Peverell now, and still no sign of Mister Spudmore.

Really, this whole thing was a wash.

“But I want to be together.” If he was aiming for a pretty pick up line, he failed.

She’s heard too many pretty pick up lines to get flattered by this one.

“Then I’d have to tell you to get lost,” she says, pleasantly, while picking his hand off of her waist like a dead mouse. “I don’t date Death Eater wannabes.” _Especially not after what happened to Cedric._

For a moment, he freezes, as if she’d slapped him. “That’s a heavy accusation, Chang.”

“You sure that’s not what you want to be?” She’s a pureblood, but that doesn’t matter much to his lot. She’s foreign, so her blood will always be inferior. Sure, it’s not the slurs they slung at Granger back in the day, but they had slurs whispered behind their hands for “her kind” all the same. Muggles did it too, which makes the whole thing more amusing. _Funny, how you’d hate to share even that in common with a muggle._ “Back when we were in school you wouldn’t be caught dead with the likes of me.”

“People change.” He shrugs again, though he looks uncomfortable now. “Let me say my piece before you throw me out, Chang.”

 _I don’t see why I should have to,_ she almost says, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t, because damn her curiosity she wants to know what he’d say. “I’m waiting,” is what she settles on.

“I think we could help each other out. Quid pro quo, you know?”

The words bring a spark of rage to her vision. _I don’t need help from the likes of you._ “Do you want to know what I see when I look at you?” she says, strangely calm. “I see,” she continues without waiting for him to indicate any interest. “Someone who comes waltzing back after making life hell for so many people for so long, and buying the government’s interest to make himself received again. And I think that’s pathetic.”

He flinches. “You want to know what I see when I look at you?”

She shrugs. “Do your worst, Zabini.” What’ll he say this time? That she’s by turns, too submissive and yet not submissive enough?

That she’s good but just not good enough?

That all the hard work she’s put into her studies over the years only earned the ribbing of hitting the books too hard and never having any fun?

That she’s by turns, both a slut for dressing as she does and knowing that she’s good looking and a prude for wanting to take a second look at anyone she snogs?

“I see a woman who has never been able to take a dead boy off of his pedestal. Now, the rest of the world might go mad over the Boy-Who-Lived, but you’re more obsessed with Cedric Diggory, and literally no man you ever meet will _ever_ be worth your time, even if he’s the best in the world if you don’t take Diggory off that pedestal.” He runs a hand through his short hair, looks as though he’s said too much and too little all at once. “But you’re worth more than just being the former girlfriend of a dead martyr. And you know it. You burn with it. You want that life out of his shadow. You don’t want to be martyred.”

“What does it matter to you? He was better than you’ll ever be.” Fury burns white hot inside her, sizzles like hot oil in the pan. She could’ve let him go, but he _had_ to mention Cedric, had to use the one thing that got under her skin and stung and stung and _stung._ “He was the one boyfriend I ever had who was worth a damn. Don’t go around deciding what I am and what I’m not, Zabini.”

“The war rot your brain, Chang?” He’s looking at her as if she’d grown a second head or a third eye, breathing hard.

“Don’t lecture me about the war. You didn’t fight in it,” she snaps at him, and turns on her heel. In a few more steps, she’s already left him behind.

She ends up dancing with Neville Longbottom later that night, when the dancefloor clears for waltzes, having neither met Mister Spudmore, or seen Blaise again.

Bless for the latter, pox for the former.

And it’s only her luck that the words exchanged with Blaise sticks to her brain, and no matter how she attempts to dislodge the verbal burs she manages to think of them nonetheless.

* * *

She floos home to their house in Rye, to visit her parents for Duanwu, and bears the disappointment they have that she and Andy are no longer seeing each other with the grace that only someone who has dealt with this for years now can bear it.

“Eat more,” Mum says, ladening her bowl of rice with sweet pork ribs and glass noodles. “You look so thin and tired.”

If she ever ate like this regularly, she wouldn’t maintain her figure quite so well.

There’s nothing like food from home.

Mum laughs when she asks about what sort of spices she uses, if there’s a special one that makes the food at home taste so delicious, and says “only love tastes like that, Qiu’er.”

“I’ve been working on a project recently,” she says, and sees Dad perk up. “Combining the puzzle lock with barriers to produce a more flexible anti-crash mechanism.”

This is the sort of thing he knows, the business of work — math and figures had guided him through a new country where he didn’t always speak the language — it had never failed him as words have.

Dad hems at this, thinking it over. “What aspect of the puzzle lock have you been looking at? How are you designing your basis? That plays a big role.”

She pulls her chair up to the table, lays out her ideas with paper and a brush, explaining as she does.

Long ago, Dad had made her a kongming lock with little bits of witch hazel he’d gathered on the hillsides as a present for Yule. And one Yuletide, when she was seven, after she’d grown too old to be flattered by handmade locks, she’d found a Cleansweep 260 under the tree for her come Christmas morning.

Her parents might not have known why she hungered to fly, and why she wanted so desperately to play such a violent game, but they saw her roots growing deep into the soil of the New Country, and had encouraged that the best they knew how to.

After dinner and lights, after Dad’s old stories are brought out and told once again, she sits on the porch steps as her mum french braid’s her hair.

“Mum?” There’s a lot unsaid between her and her parents these days.

Has been a lot unsaid ever since she started Hogwarts and only wrote home in letters every two weeks or so.

But somehow, Mum always knows when she’s upset. Why else would she have put out Cho’s favorite dishes tonight?

“Qiu’er?” Mum pauses, her hands steady on Cho’s scalp. “What’s the matter?”

“Do you think I’ve put Cedric on a pedestal?” He was a good person, one of the very best types of people.

Kind.

Honorable.

Fair.

In ways that she really admired and wished she was like. He had his petty moments, and his faults, she knew that. But she preferred to think of all the good that had left the world when he did, and all the spaces he left behind.

That space had been so wide, a hole larger than a boy of seventeen could ever be.

Behind her, Mum sighs. “I think,” and here Mum pauses again, as if thinking about how to word this next phrase. That never boded well. “you’ve let him define you, and what you want. But you are more than that, and you have done more with your life than love him. So of course, you aren’t happy.”

Did she really try to fit herself down in the spaces of what Cedric left behind?

He’d been so young when he died, and she’d been so young when she loved him. Ten years have come and gone, ten summers, ten autumns, and she who had been named for autumn only wonders if a year and a half can really be set against ten.

And if so, how had Blaise Zabini known, and how did he see it so clearly when no one else would tell her something like that?

And not for the first time since they’d met at the Ministry, her mind turns back to Blaise Zabini.

Maybe that was what he wanted all along.

* * *

“You look tired these days,” Luna says, dreamily around her ice cream cone, one day in late June, as they sit outside the ice cream parlour that had replaced Fortescue’s.

It’d been boarded up for some time after the war, and had only recently been reopened. Fortescue had been slaughtered by the Dark Lord for reasons that no one really understood, and his place of cheer and sunshine was trashed in the aftermath, though Leanne Laughland had bought the place a few years after the war, and with her little brother had fixed it up a touch.

It isn’t the same, but then, these things never are.

If she’d known, maybe she would’ve appreciated Fortescue’s history class advice more often.

But despite growing up in the Dark Lord’s shadow, war didn’t seem real until Harry had landed on the overgrown quidditch pitch, Cedric’s already cooling body in tow.

It had only hit her then, and by then, Fortescue’s Ice Cream Parlour was farther from her mind than the stars.

“Everyone keeps telling me that I look tired.” She sighs, scooping up a spoon of her own chocolate sundae. “Is it really that obvious?”

She’d sent a letter off to Mister Spudmore the other day, in between working on two different contracts, requesting a meeting before seeing him properly.

She should’ve done that to begin with rather than trying to surreptitiously meet him at some party she wasn’t even sure he’d attend.

“Mmm.” Luna sighs, still staring off into the distance, strawberry earrings swinging pendulously. Her eyes had been haunted by the War too, with how long she’d been stuck in Malfoy’s cellar, having only Merlin knows what done to her, but over time, that had faded. “It’s not hard to see the way you fade with the seasons. The moon frogs might be trying to take over your future.”

That hits a little harder than it ought to have.

Luna is two years her junior, though they were housemates back in the day. In the rush of youth and separate lives, it’d been hard to notice Luna, lost in the shuffle of bigger things.

But though she’d never joined in ostracizing Luna for her beliefs or what her father printed, she _had_ also disbelieved what she said about moon frogs and nargles and other eccentric items.

Exam scores and essays may have seemed more important then, but people matter more.

“Moon frogs are welcome to my future.” She looks forward into the years, and sees the long slow turn of seasons, a long spring, a long summer, followed by a longer fall.

She’d been named for the autumn season, but that too, meant that she was named for the fall.

The fall of Cedric, the fall of the summer, the fall of innocence and youth.

“You don’t really mean that.” Luna says, no longer particularly dreamy at all. “You wouldn’t love so many people if you do.”

 _We love you too, Cho._ Luna’s eyes seem to say. _We’d miss you if the moon frogs took you._

She laughs, scoops another spoonful of her sundae. “I’ll try to get out more. I’ll turn paler than a vampire if I keep this up.”

“I did want to ask you about that,” Luna says, dreamily once more. “Do you suppose Hercule the Cruel only sided with Voldemort because he said that vampires wouldn’t be persecuted or called ‘bloodsuckers’ under the new regime?”

The Dark Lord had thrived on recruitment of the creatures, the people who were cast into the realm of “dark magic” and had lived the lives of the lonely on the outskirts of society.

“I think that played a major factor, yes.”

He’d had a way with words, or so they say. And he’d wooed people who felt they were unloved. The werewolves and goblins had followed his lead because he could promise them better than the status quo. It’s not that big of a stretch to think that the vampire covens followed him as well for the same reason.

“Do you suppose,” Luna continues, “that they’d appreciate us more if we were kinder to them?”

And in the warm summer sun, Luna tells her of dreams and plans, hopes for a better, kinder future.

* * *

In early July, she meets Mister Randolph Spudmore for the first time in a tea shop in the Alley, a modern little place nothing like Madam Puddifoot’s.

He’s a short man, middle aged or thereabouts, with a thick German accent, though he breaks into a smile upon seeing her. “Ah, Miss Chang, I have been waiting for you.”

She offers him a smile and a hand to shake. “It’s a great pleasure to meet you Mister Spudmore, I’m so honored to hear that you’re interested in my work.”

“Yes, I have heard that you have been making great strides in improving racing broom safety. I saw it in action myself when the Harpies played in Berlin.”

She hadn’t even heard of a collision happening. “Oh?”

“Normally, when a broom designer thinks of safety, they map out a runic network to prevent damage from happening to the rider of the broom by throwing up a shield, but your work is different. It takes a different approach.”

“I redistribute the forces. It improves the collision survival rating on both sides.”

You can’t meet a hard force with another hard force. For every yang, there is a yin. For every push, there is a pull.

When a _person_ is about to collide with another, throwing up a protective bubble to shield only one person leads to a stronger backlash on the other.

“Yes, that is why for so long, broom designers did not operate with safety in mind except when it comes to diving maneuvers. Two shields colliding might cause an explosion.” Mister Spudmore leans forward, clearly excited by the potential of what she’s discovered. “But your work isn’t really a shield, is it?”

“No, it’s not quite a shield.” Oh, there were some outward forces, making sure that the two sides didn’t actually bump into each other, but even people riding brooms that _didn’t_ have her charms on them would come out of any collision better off than a collision without them. “Mister Spudmore, I really appreciate your interest, but I’d like to know more about what you expect to do with this knowledge before we discuss things further.”

Knowledge like this can be used to wound too, to hurt and cause damage, and while she doesn’t expect that a reclusive broom maker would use her work to start another war, she doesn’t know what he intends to do with it.

“Miss Chang, this work is revolutionary.” Mister Spudmore leans forward. “I want to invent a better broom than the current Firebolt, and I think this revolutionary work would be the foundation to improving my current model. I’d like to propose a partnership.”

She thinks of Cedric, of Luna and Marietta and Ginny, of her generation of young men and women scarred by a war that took too much from all of them in different ways, whether that loss came early and or late.

Everyone hungers for a little safety these days.

Thinks of how much they are trying to rebuild, and how she has always worked to build a _safer_ world.

Would the war have been decided with luxury racing brooms and secretive inventors?

Will it help if she offers her skills to this task anyway?

Is her hesitation about winning the war that is already over, and must she always tread these paths over and over and over again?

She looks up from her tea. “I’m interested.”

* * *

She goes with Marietta and Ms. Edgecombe to St. Mungos on a viciously summer day in late July to talk over treatment plans.

There’s a lot she still wants to make sure that they’re getting, that the scars on Marietta’s face didn’t make people turn up their noses.

People know that she fought in the last battle, and that she’d paid her dues. Letting that rub off a little on Marietta and Ms. Edgecombe isn’t doing anything wrong.

“The healer who’s willing to take your case has his office on the third floor, Mister Blaise Zabini, you can’t miss it.”

They’re directed off to the elevator to find the correct floor.

Meanwhile, her mind spins in overdrive even as her mouth continues to comfort both Marietta and Ms. Edgecombe.

Blaise?

Zabini?

Working in St. Mungo’s as a healer?

Even the news of her working with the inventor of the Firebolt breaking on the front page of the Prophet didn’t seem quite so surreal.

But then, there he is, dressed in the healer’s robes, opening the door, inviting Ms. Edgecombe to sit down, talking quietly, professionally, not a second glance cast at her.

If he still remembers their last conversation, his face gives nothing away.

“So there might be hope?” Marietta croaks, looking up at him with almost palpable hunger.

Marietta has always been close with her mum.

“We’ll do what we can do, Miss Edgecombe, there’s still hope for your mum.” He folds his hands together over his knee, a sort of practiced gesture. “There’s still a good chance. The disease has progressed of course, but I still believe in a fighting chance.”

In this alternate world, where former wannabe Death Eaters turned into healers, talking over cancer treatment options and looking for all the world like they belonged there, the oxygen slowly disappears from the room.

* * *

The discussion over, she bids Marietta and Ms. Edgecombe goodbye inside the atrium, seeing them safely through the floo before turning to head back to her office in the Alley.

“Chang?”

His voice follows her. “Chang, can we talk?”

She walks faster, almost at the doors now. “Chan— Cho!”

She hears his footsteps behind her, faster and more urgent now. “Cho, _please._ ”

She disapparates.

* * *

“You know, you don’t give bad advice.” He sits down next to her at the pub, a muggle pub in muggle London of all things. How had he even managed to _find_ this place? “I did need to hear that.”

“What’s driven you down here, Zabini? This place’s a bit off your beaten track isn’t it?” The time after the war sure must’ve changed something, because she didn’t believe he’d know his way around otherwise.

But then, it’s changed her too, in more ways than one.

“You did.” He waves a tenner at the bartender and requests a round of drinks. “You’re the one who told me not to lecture you about something I didn’t participate in.”

Oh, he even uses muggle money nowadays. Will wonders never cease.

“Well, out to lecture me about something else now maybe?” She turns to him then, her legs crossed, sundress sticking slightly to the spot between her shoulder blades, slick with sweat. “Let me tell you this straight, Zabini. I don’t owe you anything.”

Odd, that she’s getting so heated about this.

He’d stuck it to her regarding Cedric last time, but then, he’d been after her for the sake of bettering his reputation last time.

She doubts much has changed even though he’s somehow working on some administrative thing in St. Mungo’s these days, a pretty sharp turn around for someone who hung around Draco and his cronies while they were all back in school.

“I’m just going to lay all my cards out on the table,” he casts her half a crooked smile. “And then I’m going to hope for the best. Willing still to hear me out?”

She thinks back to the way he’d talked to Ms. Edgecombe in St. Mungo’s, that gentle, almost soft take he’d had.

_I don’t know if this procedure’s going to work Ma’am, but I and everyone else here will do our best. We’ll do what we can do, Miss Edgecombe, there’s still hope for your mum._

“Say what you need to say.” She casts a light wandless silencing charm around them, a little bubble in the noise of the pub with just the two of them. He’s a private sort, had kept to himself during their school years, and his mother hadn’t been among the ones who’d donned a mask.

It’s just barely enough for her to not full body-bind him and throw him out on his ear.

“I’m going to do my best to be honest.” He runs a hand through his hair again, looks conflicted. “Merlin knows it’s hard for me still sometimes. Apologies if this takes too much of your time, I just, really want to get this off of my chest.”

“I’ll wait.” She’d said she’ll wait, so she will. The methodology of a Raven. Cedric had always laughed about that.

Once he made up his mind about someone, there wasn’t even a need for the benefit of the doubt. No need to test theories when your heart’s compass will point you true.

“I’ve always liked you.”

…He really did like to lead with zingers didn’t he.

“I had to take a good hard look at myself after the war, look at where I was going.” He tries to look away, but turns his gaze back to her face. “Needless to say I didn’t, I didn’t like where I was going.”

“Death Eater world order?”

So many people had died. There're so many families no longer whole, so she should bless the heavens and earth and light too many sticks of incense for the fact that _hers_ is still whole.

Even if her heart isn’t.

“Please understand that I never set out to kill anyone. I never intended for anyone to get hurt, or for anyone to die because of my actions.” There is conflict warring on his face. If it’s untrue, he’s a good actor.

It looks true.

“I think about it a lot, all the terrible fucked up shit I’ve said and done. And I don’t want to live like that anymore, so I’m not going to.” Ah, so that’d prompted the change that had gotten him into healer’s courses, and then into the hospital. “In school I just, I guess I went with the flow.”

Odd choice for someone who was willing to let anyone who didn’t have the right blood or the right pedigree get brutally murdered by the people who did have the “right” blood.

Then again, the singing seduction of the Dark Arts sang louder and sweeter for some.

“I’m not going to tell you that you should give me a chance just because I’ve changed, I just wanted you to know. And I wanted to try, because I’ve been trying at all these other things too.”

_I wanted to try._

It speaks to her, always trying.

“You really do know how to sweet talk a girl,” she says, passing him another shot. “Tell me, Zabini, what is it about me that you like?”

He swallows _hard_ but doesn’t look away. “You’re thorough.” Is what he says at last. “You’re kind, and loyal, and you’ve always worked so hard to get to where you want to be. I admire that about you.”

Nothing about a good career, or what a good wife and mother she’d make.

Nothing about how she’s beautiful or well mannered, polished, the sort of girl you’d write home to your mum about.

She thinks about it.

Really thinks about it.

“Alright,” she says. “I’ll give us a shot.”

But only one.

He breaks out into a smile, half disbelieving, half ecstatic. “I’ll make it worth it, I promise.”

But if that’s true, only time will tell.

* * *

She doesn’t get dolled up too fancy to go to the shower, not a particularly formal event though it will be large, just because of how large the Weasley clan has grown these past few years. Blaise meets her at her flat, navy blue dress robes well made, but certainly not tailored.

For someone who’s as made of money as he is, he certainly doesn’t dress to show it off anymore.

“We’ll have to floo over.” She turns around one more time in front of the mirror to make sure the cardigan and skirt match at least a bit with her jade earrings. “Harry and Ginny live in Godric’s Hollow nowadays, and you know how heavily warded their grounds are to keep out the reporters and fame seekers and other people like that.”

He pauses before he comes over, holding what she assumes is the shrunk down version of his present for the baby. “I didn’t know that no.” He laughs, half deprecatingly. “I guess no one’s ever really going to be able to put the War away, will they?”

It’s been a few weeks that they’ve been seeing each other, having dinner out in various restaurants in the Alley, walking together after work — he’d taken her stargazing once with a magical telescope, and they’d traced constellations and watched meteorites streak across a sky growing faintly light on the eastern horizon.

It’d been such a fun time she hadn’t even realized the coming dawn.

“Maybe the kids will. They didn’t have to live through it.”

Fred Weasley is gone, and his girlfriend Angelina had gone on to date George. She wishes them happiness together.

“I hope so.” Blaise sighs. “It seems a pity for them to live in the shadow of something they weren’t even alive for.”

They’d been born when the Dark Lord had been in the height of his power. What had followed after was a pale imitation.

But it was a shadow on their generation and the generation before them all the same.

Her parents told the stories, though not as often as the stories of war and persecution in Shanghai.

“Only time will tell.” She turns to him then, looks up at his night sky eyes and the slight scar on the underside of his jaw.

The war hadn’t left him unscathed either.

“Ah,” he says. “I guess we should get going?”

And so they should.

* * *

“Hey, Cho.” The voice is half unfamiliar to her already.

When she turns around, it’s _Harry,_ who’s grown at least another few inches since she last saw him at his wedding, suddenly a head and a half taller than her — who knew the boy a year younger than her would be so tall now?

But then, tall fits the savior of the wizarding world.

“Hey Harry, it’s good to see you again.” There’s plenty of people here, friends of Harry’s (of which she doesn’t really think she is a part) or friends of Ginny’s (of which she counts herself among because Ginny had been the one to invite her).

“It’s, well, it’s good to see you, too.” He rubs the back of his neck with a hand, still smiling slightly awkwardly. “Well, and it’s good to see you doing well, you know.”

“Yeah, things have been going pretty well.” She places her wrapped gift on the table by the entryway. He and Ginny had moved back to Godric’s Hollow a year or so into their marriage, downsizing from the big draft house at number twelve, Grimmauld Place, especially since they weren’t always around to live at home. “I signed onto a new project, so I’m assuming that that’s going to keep me busy for a while yet.”

She guesses that things will change once he and Ginny have a baby in the house. Someone will have to be home or taking care of the child.

Behind her, Blaise sets down his own gift, and comes forward to wrap his arm around her waist. “It’s good to see you, Potter,” he says, pleasantly neutral.

“Good to see you too, I guess, Zabini.” Harry casts her a look, almost on the border of “is this someone I have to run off” but just barely skirts this side of hospitality.

She wraps her own arm around Blaise, her own expression pleasantly neutral. “Blaise is my plus one. Ginny said to bring him.”

“Oh, uh, I wasn’t aware you two were a thing now.” Harry turns back to Blaise, a forced smile on his face. “Well, good on you, mate.”

Blaise still has that pleasant neutral expression on his face when they encounter Ron and Hermione Granger-Weasley just a little bit further in.

“It’s good to see you, Cho.” That's Hermione, making her way through the crowd, Ron in tow.

"Good to see you too." The silence lingers as Ron and Hermione try to find something to make of Blaise with his arm around her waist. "Both of you," she adds, half afterthought.

Ron looks like he wants to say something, but Hermione almost imperceptibly shakes her head, and the moment passes.

She and Ron talk of quidditch instead, his excitement at learning about a new broom in development under the expertise of Spudmore infectious.

And something new is planted.

* * *

It’s autumn when she comes around to visit Amos and Anne again, down in Devon, on the outskirts of Ottery St. Catchpole, having sent an owl inquiring if tea time might be already occupied.

But since it is not, she makes her way down on her old Comet 260, traveling the memory lane in more ways than one.

“Oh, Cho, you didn’t have to come!” Anne Diggory bustles about her parlor, rearranging teacups and fluffing cushions. “I know you’re busy these days. I heard all about it from Luna. That Firebolt deal is so exciting!”

“Auntie, I said I was coming to tea.” _Did you really think I wouldn’t after I said so?_ “Let me help Uncle Amos around the house too, I know there’s been a few odd jobs he’s put off because of his bad back.”

She might be here for tea, but these are Cedric’s parents, the people who missed him more than she ever could, the people who raised him, people she thought might be family for real, in legal, flesh and blood ways once, when she was young and perhaps naive.

But they are still her family, in plenty of other ways that matter. Uncle and Auntie in a way that even though ten years have passed, she still loves and cares for.

“Oh Cho, honey.” Anne sits down with her, at the tea table, smiles at her over the rim of her circular glasses and almost sighs in her tea. “Cho, we’re all so proud to have known you. You’ve grown up into a wonderful young woman.”

She laughs at this, a bright clear thing, light like a bird’s wings — she hasn’t felt like this in a long time — “Auntie, you flatter me. I’m just Little Cho.”

Amos comes in a few minutes later, after scraping the leaves off of his boots, and breaks into his own beaming smile at seeing her.

The years and Cedric’s death have aged him, but he still talks quidditch with her, enthused by the idea of Ireland winning the World Cup again this year.

And if later she helps him move some of the heavier objects in the shed with a healthy dose of wandless magic, then that’s only what he’s due.

Cedric would’ve done it if he were here, so she steps up in his place.

* * *

Mum and Dad _would_ like Blaise, she thinks. He’s intelligent and articulate, has a good job in a field they would approve of, and he’s polite and well mannered when he wants to be.

His best behavior is charming enough to meet their graces.

They would approve of him sitting out the War as well, having tasted war when they were younger and had always considered her own involvement in the DA too reckless.

But since she was already eighteen, they could not stop her.

His family...well, he’s only ever mentioned his aging mum, and his own filial piety can put hers to shame, so likely her parents would like that too about him.

He’s successful and young and has a good future ahead of him.

But they haven’t met him yet.

They haven’t met him yet, and she can admit, at least to herself, that it’s because she’s not entirely sure her parents _would_ like him, even despite his good points.

“Nearly became a Death Eater” doesn’t fill out anyone’s resume well.

So she keeps the news that she’s seeing someone from them for now.

She’s still thinking about it as she heads up to the third floor of St. Mungo’s to meet Blaise at the end of his shift.

She’d bought hot chocolate from the cafe at the corner, holding a cup in each of her gloved hands. He had a sweet tooth, who knew?

She sees him at the end of the hallway, bowed over his clipboard, scribbling something down with a quill, likely filling out information for the next person who has to come on shift after him, and nearly bumps into someone coming around the corner. “‘Scuse me, my apologies,” before he finally lifts his head and sees her, breaking into a smile as he does so. “Cho!”

“Blaise.” She raises a cup to offer him as he comes closer. “I thought you might like something to pick you up since you worked late today.”

* * *

Outside, as they walk arm in arm, two cups of hot chocolate in hand, it is snowing, a cold chill upon the wintry street, but the Alley bustles with Yuletide cheer and noise.

Soon, James Sirius Potter will be born, adding some festive cheer to a household that needs it, and likely to make the front page of the Daily Prophet from the sheer charm of being “son of the Boy-Who-Lived.”

She’d picked something practical to give him for the shower, a quidditch themed crib set charmed to protect him from most things, runes for guardianship and safe home carved into the cedar frame.

He might be the son of the Boy-Who-Lived, but he would still be a little boy, and the son of someone she knows is truly bad at keeping himself safe, so best have a little precaution as is.

Blaise had picked a similarly practical present, a new mum’s potions set for cleaning up children’s messes, and though he’d been odd and out of place at the shower, she hopes that one day he’ll be less so.

“You haven’t been up to the office yet, have you?”

Her office is on the second level, above another shop selling parchment and quills, so it’s always been easier to Floo into it instead of flying in in the mornings and taking the rickety outside steps.

Odd that despite him having already seen the flat, her office still feels like a personal space that she has to invite him up to go see.

But she feels comfortable doing that now.

“No, I can’t say I have.” He pulls his wand out for a moment, casts a warming charm in her direction, and stops. “But I’d love to, if you’d have me, Cho.”

“Qiu’er,” she says, and thinks for one brief regrettable moment, that only Cedric, of all of her boyfriends, had ever asked her what she preferred to be called. But this is the start of something new. “My name is Chang Qiu, but you can call me Qiu’er if you’d like.”

* * *

“I suffer in my loving, and you know it.”

— Willa Cather, “The Basket”

**Author's Note:**

> Writing this was a lot of fun! I hope you enjoyed this piece, because I certainly enjoyed writing about it and musing about what I think Cho and her character is like as an adult, especially in a post war world where she seems lucky, but also isn't.
> 
> The headcanon I went with regarding her name in this fic is that her name is 常秋，Chang Qiu, 常 (Chang) being the eightieth most common surname in the Song Dynasty's 100 surnames book, generally meaning "habitual, common, or long lasting" and 秋 (qiu) being the character for "autumn," but since qiu is subjectively harder to pronounce, it became "Cho". (If I did this specifically so I could be symbolic with her name that's completely on me.) 
> 
> <3


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